Man trapped 41 hours in elevator

A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade.

"After a certain period of time I knew that I was in pretty big trouble because it was the weekend," Nicholas White said Monday on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America."

Video of his Oct. 15, 1999, ordeal in an elevator in New York's McGraw-Hill building was posted online to accompany an article in the April 21 edition of The New Yorker. It can be seen on the magazine's Web site and had been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube by Monday morning.

White said he understood why the video has captured people's attention: So many have wondered what they would do if it happened to them.

Edited to a soundtrack of classical piano music, the video shows him pacing, trying to climb the walls, lying down, curled up in a fetal position, prying apart the doors. (He said he relieved himself down the shaft when the doors were open.)

White sued the managers of the midtown skycraper and the elevator maintenance company and won an undisclosed settlement.

He was a production manager for Business Week when he left his office about 11 p.m. Friday for a cigarette break. According to the article, it was never determined exactly why the elevator stalled though there was talk of a voltage dip.